1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to an information processing apparatus, a print data forming method, a print control program, and a memory medium in which such a program has been stored. More particularly, the invention relates to an information processing apparatus for forming print data of a host computer or the like, a method of forming print data, a print control program, and a memory medium in which such a program has been stored.
2. Related Background Art
In an information processing apparatus such as a host computer or the like in which a printer driver program for forming print data to be printed by a printer has been set up, draw data (print command) requested from an application through an OS is converted by using a printer driver into a page description language (hereinafter, also referred to as a PDL) which can be interpreted by the printer.
According to the recent printer driver, by processing a function in the printer on the printer driver side, even a printer having a low function can provide a function similar to the advanced function of the printer to the user. For example, in case of a printer for ejecting a paper in a face-up state, hitherto, print data which is received from the information processing apparatus in an ascending order is spooled by an amount of all pages and a printing process is started from the last page. However, in the recent printer driver, with respect to the printer for performing the face-up paper ejection, the spooling process is executed on the host side before the print data is formed, the print data is transmitted to the printer in a descending order, and it is sufficient that the printer starts the printing process in the receiving order. Therefore, there is no need to provide spooling means for the printer side and the reduction of the costs can be expected. In the case where such a printing in the descending order is executed by the driver and a duplex printing is further performed by the printer, the number of entire pages of a print job (the number of pages when data whose printing is desired is arranged on an actual recording paper: hereinafter, referred to as the number of physical pages or physical page number) is discriminated, and in case of the print job in which the number of physical pages is equal to an odd number, the last page is printed as a blank page on which nothing is printed. Therefore, upon forming of the print job, the driver inserts the print data whose output result indicates a blank page to the last page and inserts a command for instructing that a blank page saving is not performed into the print data, thereby keeping a style in the actual duplex print mode.
In the future, in the printer having such a technical background, there is considered a case of performing a charging process on the basis of the number of print copies which is counted up by a counter for counting the number of printed sheets (specifically speaking, the number of (scanned) faces on which images have been formed by an image forming unit is counted). In the printer for performing the duplex printing as mentioned above, however, if the number of physical pages which are printed is equal to the odd number, for example, if the physical page number indicates 3 pages, a blank page is printed to the last page (the fourth page) corresponding to the reverse side of the third page. However, even in case of the blank page on which nothing is printed, as described above, since the print data of the blank page (this point is also similarly applied to a case of a new line or a new page) has actually been inserted, an image forming is also performed to the blank page (the blank page is also scanned). Therefore, the count-up operation is performed by regarding it as the number of print surfaces, so that the charging process is executed. There is a problem such that inconvenience is caused to the user. Even if the count value is not used for the charging process, in the case where the user made a maintenance contract such that a maintenance fee is different in accordance with the count value, there is a problem such that a similar inconvenience is caused.